Blog

October 6, 2014

A POLITICO analysis of mobile sites for about 40 competitive House and Senate races found that a majority were plagued with missed opportunities for campaigns trying to find volunteers, donors and voters. The no-nos range from clunky pages that frequently crashed or weren’t formatted properly to content that was just too tiny to read.

Another big problem often discouraged by some political consultants: multiple pages of navigation before a potential donor can hit the send button with their all-important credit card numbers.

“No one likes to fill those form fields on a mobile device,” said Jonathan Karush, a Democratic digital consultant and president of the communications firm Liberty Concepts. “It’s a pain.”

Political operatives from both parties say they recognize mobile’s tantalizing possibilities. Still, many campaigns are cutting corners on the mobile front — ignoring pleas for fewer tabs or larger font sizes — even if the potential payoff could mean more votes or thousands of dollars in additional donations. They’re reluctant to shift limited budget dollars away from traditional TV ads, especially for innovations that have a short shelf life limited to this election season.